Having seen several porn films from director "John Donne", I had prematurely pigeonholed him as a hack. With SHUT UP- AND DEAL, he delivered an interesting softcore exercise that ultimately fails, but at least tried hard for a change.
Gerard Broulard stars as Tom, a very young guy who's getting married tomorrow to his blonde sweetheart Carol. Film consists of his older brother treating him to a bachelor party that is taking place as an adjunct to their regular poker game, hence the film's title.
I had just seen a fascinating and lengthy Something Weird trailer for LOVE GAMBLER, a color film Broulard starred in (he narrates the trailer extremely effectively), but not related to SHUT UP, not available on video and not even listed in IMDb at all. He's a soft porn star with an interesting look and personality.
Unfortunately, Donne shot this black & white film MOS, with rather crude dubbing of voices for dialog scenes. Broulard is given a low, mature voice that doesn't match his character (and is vastly different from his familiar speaking voice heard in his other Talkies), detracting mightily here.
I doubt if they did storyboards for porn (!) in those days, but SHUT UP is an impressive feat of juggling motifs and footage, very well edited. The photography is too close-up, becoming tiresome in its emphasis, but does feature some very effective first-person, wide-angle, hand-held camera-work that is arousing in the simulated sex scenes.
As the poker game goes on endlessly, and guys are shooting pool in the background, picture has a real-time quality with B girls arriving to service the cast, especially Tom. They are a beautiful group of femmes, with terrific breasts, and the b&w lensing stylizes everything in a way that color would not. Brief full-frontal nudity is presented, but the sex is not overly explicit.
There's a general air of misogyny hanging over the film, typical not only of porn but all BACHELOR PARTY sagas. So it comes as quite a shock when the final reel turns everything on its head.
SPOILERS ALERT:
They've been awaiting all night the arrival of Aphrodite, a high-class hooker with an impressive reputation. It isn't surprising that she turns out to be Carol, a typical porn "twist". However, what is surprising is the tirade she hurls at the assembled men and Tom in particular.
Starting with "Haven't you ever seen a whore before?", she lambastes the men for exploiting her and segues into narration of an endless hand-held camera flashback of a beefy Chicano farm-hand chasing her through the woods and raping her, thus initiating her into sex years back. She exults (retrospectively) in that experience, and hands Tom & Co. a man-hating diatribe they won't soon forget.
The flashback is oddly filmed in what I can only describe as "The Outer Limits" school of photography, recalling many similar Conrad Hall-lensed sequences usually involving monsters or at least misunderstood beasties on the loose shown via first-person, hand-held, wide-angle camera. For porn this is seemingly avant garde, and makes one wish "John Donne" had gone the extra mile and made a REAL film here.
Ending is typically shoddy anticlimax: Tom runs off upstairs, a gunshot is dubbed in, and we're informed of his off-camera suicide, as "FINIS" is superimposed on the screen. This remains my long-held pet peeve with porn: the audience is generally insulted when most porn (soft or hard variety) movies hit their finales.
A weird affectation is nearly all the cast and crew given French names on screen during the credits, seemingly passing this off as a Quebecois production -makes no sense, and was probably an in-joke.
Of the gals, Lynn Harris and her amazing nipple cones continues to impress, and it was nice to see her away from the clutches of Nick Millard for a change (and delivering a quite different lesbian scene to boot). Bambi Allen and Karen Thomas are also ultra-busty and alluring. All the girls boast Guinness Book record-length fake eyelashes, an odd but noticeable fetish.
Gerard Broulard stars as Tom, a very young guy who's getting married tomorrow to his blonde sweetheart Carol. Film consists of his older brother treating him to a bachelor party that is taking place as an adjunct to their regular poker game, hence the film's title.
I had just seen a fascinating and lengthy Something Weird trailer for LOVE GAMBLER, a color film Broulard starred in (he narrates the trailer extremely effectively), but not related to SHUT UP, not available on video and not even listed in IMDb at all. He's a soft porn star with an interesting look and personality.
Unfortunately, Donne shot this black & white film MOS, with rather crude dubbing of voices for dialog scenes. Broulard is given a low, mature voice that doesn't match his character (and is vastly different from his familiar speaking voice heard in his other Talkies), detracting mightily here.
I doubt if they did storyboards for porn (!) in those days, but SHUT UP is an impressive feat of juggling motifs and footage, very well edited. The photography is too close-up, becoming tiresome in its emphasis, but does feature some very effective first-person, wide-angle, hand-held camera-work that is arousing in the simulated sex scenes.
As the poker game goes on endlessly, and guys are shooting pool in the background, picture has a real-time quality with B girls arriving to service the cast, especially Tom. They are a beautiful group of femmes, with terrific breasts, and the b&w lensing stylizes everything in a way that color would not. Brief full-frontal nudity is presented, but the sex is not overly explicit.
There's a general air of misogyny hanging over the film, typical not only of porn but all BACHELOR PARTY sagas. So it comes as quite a shock when the final reel turns everything on its head.
SPOILERS ALERT:
They've been awaiting all night the arrival of Aphrodite, a high-class hooker with an impressive reputation. It isn't surprising that she turns out to be Carol, a typical porn "twist". However, what is surprising is the tirade she hurls at the assembled men and Tom in particular.
Starting with "Haven't you ever seen a whore before?", she lambastes the men for exploiting her and segues into narration of an endless hand-held camera flashback of a beefy Chicano farm-hand chasing her through the woods and raping her, thus initiating her into sex years back. She exults (retrospectively) in that experience, and hands Tom & Co. a man-hating diatribe they won't soon forget.
The flashback is oddly filmed in what I can only describe as "The Outer Limits" school of photography, recalling many similar Conrad Hall-lensed sequences usually involving monsters or at least misunderstood beasties on the loose shown via first-person, hand-held, wide-angle camera. For porn this is seemingly avant garde, and makes one wish "John Donne" had gone the extra mile and made a REAL film here.
Ending is typically shoddy anticlimax: Tom runs off upstairs, a gunshot is dubbed in, and we're informed of his off-camera suicide, as "FINIS" is superimposed on the screen. This remains my long-held pet peeve with porn: the audience is generally insulted when most porn (soft or hard variety) movies hit their finales.
A weird affectation is nearly all the cast and crew given French names on screen during the credits, seemingly passing this off as a Quebecois production -makes no sense, and was probably an in-joke.
Of the gals, Lynn Harris and her amazing nipple cones continues to impress, and it was nice to see her away from the clutches of Nick Millard for a change (and delivering a quite different lesbian scene to boot). Bambi Allen and Karen Thomas are also ultra-busty and alluring. All the girls boast Guinness Book record-length fake eyelashes, an odd but noticeable fetish.
